Ballots to remain uncounted in MI and Stein blocked in Philly. Guest: Election integrity, law expert Paul Lehto says this proves 'only option is to get it right on Election Night'. Also: Trump taps climate denier, fossil-fuel tool for EPA...

Secretary of State Rice is in Europe this week defending the U.S. policies including the use of secret prisons and the CIA practice called "extreme rendition".

ABC News is reporting that prior to Rice's European trip, the CIA moved quickly to relocate all secret prisoners located in Europe.

Current and former CIA officers speaking to ABC News on the condition of confidentiality say the United States scrambled to get all the suspects off European soil before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrived there today. The officers say 11 top al Qaeda suspects have now been moved to a new CIA facility in the North African desert.

...
All but one of these 11 high-value al Qaeda prisoners were subjected to the harshest interrogation techniques in the CIA's secret arsenal, the so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" authorized for use by about 14 CIA officers and first reported by ABC News on Nov. 18.

Rice today avoided directly answering the question of secret prisons in remarks made on her departure for Europe, where the issue of secret prisons and secret flights has caused a furor.

...
Of the 12 high-value targets housed by the CIA, only one did not require water boarding before he talked. Ramzi bin al-Shibh broke down in tears after he was walked past the cell of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the operational planner for Sept. 11. Visibly shaken, he started to cry and became as cooperative as if he had been tied down to a water board, sources said.

Poor Ricky. Giving comfort to the enemy? Hardly! The enemy is currently illegally squatting in the Oval Office, and we're hardly giving any comfort to that chickenhawk. Wake up and smell the white phosphorous and burning flesh, cretin!

Great photo, David! I'd guess that Grade 3 terrorists get one night with that carnivore, Grade 2 terrorists get two nights with it, and Grade 1 terrorists get a week in the Bahamas. If they're too stupid to swim for Europe, they must get what I can't even imagine.

WILL SOME ONE IN THE MEDIA PLEASE GET BACK TO REPORTING ON THE STATUS OF PHASE II OF THE SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE. REMEMBER THOSE WHO CREATED AND DESSIMINATED THE FALSE INTELLIGENCE ABOUT WMD'S ARE STILL RUNNING FREE..LAYING THE GROUND WORK FOR MILITARY ACTION IN SYRIA AND IRAN.

PHASE II OF THE SSCI WILL INVESTIGATE THE IOFFICE OF SPECIAL PLANS, THE WHITE HOUSE IRAQ GROUP, THE POLICY OF COUNTERTERROISM GROUP ALL OF THESE GROUPS WERE "OFF LIMITS' TO ALL OTHER INVESTIGATIONS.

SOMEONE DO SOME REPORTING ABOUT THIS IMPORTANT TOPIC...PHASE II PHASEII PHASEII
SENATOR PAT ROBERST IS STILL PUTTING UP ROADBLOCKS...
CONGRESS
INVESTIGATE THE INTELLIGENCE SNOWJOB
YOU SPENT MILLIONS OF DOLLARS AND LOTS OF TIME INVESTIGATING THE LIES ABOUT A BLOWJOB.

INVESTIGATE ALL OF THOSE INVOLVED WITH THE INTELLIGENCE SNOWJOB ...PHASE II PHASE II PHASE III

#4
Jonathan, you wrote: "sometimes you must do what is necessary to protect the american people from terrorists."
You know, that might be a valid point in some alternate universe where the citizens can, through the evidence provided by history, be secure in the knowledge that their leaders are ethical, trustworthy individuals who honor & respect their own laws, treaties, Constitution & people; who mean what they say & say what they mean; who can be relied upon to only engage in torture in the most extremely urgent of circumstances in order to protect the nation from an actual and imminent threat.

In that place, I might agree with you. But that place is not here.

Here, it seems, torture has become rampant, wanton, even capricious.

Here, our leaders have turned us into the monster they claim to fight.

I'd like to see Condi & Ricky be secret prisoners...they deserve it for being "for it". Just like all the pro-Iraq warmongers...I'd like to see them forced into battle...put their money where their BIG MOUTHS's are...

#9 "This may be a stupid question from someone who isn't versed in secret American torture prisons , but why did they move the prisoners from the secret prisons during neoCondi's visit?"

Answer: They were "tidying" up the place, much like you cleaning your house of dirt before visitors come over, thus proving it's wrong or they wouldn't move them.

That's too logical of a thought for rightwingers to grasp.

I have an idea: Why didn't they actually leave them there, and have Condi give a speech to them, telling them they're not being tortured? And televise it? If there's nothing wrong going on...there's nothing to hide! But, the hiding went on, didn't it? If there's nothing going on, why can't the media interview some of these prisoners? Or at least report on them and the prisons?

Oh, I forgot, the media is bought off by Corporate America. They don't do their job anymore.

Besides trying to hide the torture and evade the law, the bushits are trying to prevent some of those they torture from being able to speak in court. I bet they also put Saddam to death before trying him on his chemical attacks, so he cannot talk in court about his erstwhile buddy rumsfeld, and his US-supplied VX gas.

Often those sanctimonious liberals and cons. ask with disgust how could the German people have stood by, while thousands were sent to their deaths in the concentration camps?

The answer, these never expected is; just like the Americans, who are sitting by idle while their vice president advocates; kidnappings, detention, and torture around the globe!

But, hang on dick Cheney does not wear a funny moustache, and boots, so no real comparisons there ha!

While the legal language used by the secretary of the state is designed to keep her ass out of the courts of the future, 500,000 yes one half of million souls are languishing in the prisons around the world for the sake of war on terror, but no holocaust, there is not a one Jew among them, so it is OK, and no comparisons to Germans supporting Hitler either!

For once Medium Right has a point, even if he is making it just to stir the pot. The reason we object to American agencies torturing "enemy agents" is in large part that we believe our side should hold itself to a higher moral standard than that of Al Qaeda, is it not? Why, then, can we not apply the same logic to our political differences at home? Leave the namecalling, smearing, and general crudeness to the rightwingers - they're quite good at it.

Just watched a clip on Crooks and Liars of Andrea Mitchell saying the torture prisions in Eurpoe were closed "long before" Rice's visit. It almost seemed like she was doing some real reporting til she let that one slip. Remember Andrea and Condasleezya P.B.is a M.F.

Condicon says the bushiks are giving special treatment to known terrorists (e.g. 9/11 planner) in order to make them talk. Maybe it's to keep them from talking? Might be interesting what they would say in court.

For Judge of Judges: Those aren't real crowns. The dental term is "neo-crowns," I believe.

Today's New York Times comes as close to calling Condi a liar as it can without using the word. "The United States does not condone torture...", in Condi-speak, means in real terms, "If we want someone tortured, we sent him to a country that does condone it, where we have a secret prison that we don't condone either and which you wouldn't know about except somebody blew our cover."

Even a B.S. artist like Condi can't explain why the German with the Muslim name who was wrongly arrested and held incommunicado for several years because of mistaken identity, was still refused entry into the United States even after the mistake was acknowledged. Reason: THE ACLU IS SUING IN HIS BEHALF, AND TO HAVE THE VICTIM STATESIDE DURING THE TRIAL WOULD ATTRACT TOO MUCH NEGATIVE PUBLICITY. NOW (WE HOPE) THE TRIAL CAN PROCEED WITHOUT THE POOR GUY'S PARTICIPATION, AND WE CAN RESUME OUR ATTACKS ON THE ACLU AS A LEFTIST GROUP.

although this thread has run its course, I'd just like to say I'm sorry to anyone who took exception to my angry response to Little Ricky's accusation that 'liberals give aid and comfort to the enemy'....
I don't think I've ever had a post deleted before this and I'm a little chagrined about it.

That said, apart from my personal F.U. shoutout to Little Ricky, my post (like many, many, many others) was an impassioned expression of frustration at what many of us see as a revolting perversion of how we as Americans define and distinguish ourselves from villains, past and present.

...Cuthbert Calculus said on 12/6/2005 @ 6:24pm PT..."Why, then, can we not apply the same logic to our political differences at home? Leave the namecalling, smearing, and general crudeness to the rightwingers - they're quite good at it."

Here's why we can't: Because Ditto-headed devotees of a certain triple-chinned, holier-than-thou, cross-addicted pill-popping, racist "broadcaster" have been running roughshod over the left for years - all the while, we on the left kept hoping that common sense and the CLEAR superiority of liberal-minded governance (as applied by BOTH parties' administrations over the years) should speak for itself.....but it DOESN'T.

In no small part, our country is in the mess it's in BECAUSE we liberals let Rush and his toadies re-define liberalism as something bad, something un-American. We've got a LOT of ground to re-claim and we'll never get it back by playing nice.

The "victory" the president and his admin now pray we will accept is tired.

They defined "victory" originally to be seizing WMD in Iraq. That war could not be won because it was a fantasy war.

Next "victory" was defined as being welcomed as liberators by the Iraqi people. The Iraqi's did not, however, like shock and awe and random killings of their women and children, less water than before, less electricity than before, less security than before, a hyper increase of terrorists and terrorism, nor did they welcome US as liberators, and so that "victory" is also an illusion.

Next "victory" was bringing "freedom" to Iraq via elections. Like Vietnam elections where "83% of the vietnamese registered voters voted" in September of 1967 even tho the viet cong were terrorizing the populace, vietnam fell not too long thereafter. Having an election is not the hallmark of freedom in case neoCons have not noticed.

The word "victory" is another empty, meaningless, and useless term which is touted as the pinnacle of admin policies and the talking points of shills like Rush and O'Reilly.

I agree that liberalism has been redefined by Rush Limbaugh and his ilk as something bad. I don't agree that liberals should lower themselves to the guttersnipe level of right-wing trolls in order to fight back.

Why is liberalism now bad? Every Gilded Age needs a scapegoat...someone to hate following a traumatic event. After the Civil War it was "disloyal traitors who supported the Confederacy." After World War I it was anarchists, immigrants, and especially Reds (even though Germany had been our enemy). After World War II it was Commies (even though Nazi and Japs had been the enemies).
Now, following Vietnam and the Iran hostage crisis, it's liberals (a variation on the Commie theme).

Liberals got a bad rap in the '70s because they were (supposedly) soft on crime, supported the welfare state, were unpatriotic, and favored special interests, especially women, minorities, and gays. They became associated with big government solutions to problems, many of which failed to do that. When inflation soared and interest rates rose in the late '70s, this was also blamed on liberals.

Undergirding the anti-liberal mind-set was always a belief that liberals were "sissies." It was manly to fight for one's country, manly to not depend on welfare and work for a living, manly not to cater to women and "queers," who remain the "other" in a guy's never-ending search for his male identity.
This explains the right wing's love of "manly virtues"
like football, NASCAR races, and stock trading, all of which the right wing uses as political weapons. Gutter language is also associated with football, NASCAR, and the stock market (spend a few days on the trading floor if you don't believe me).

Liberalism is really about ideas. It's about flexibility of thinking, about learning from history and from others who know more. Thomas Jefferson was the classic liberal, a Renaissance man with a brilliant mind who actually trusted local government but distrusted central government. I'm proud to define myself as a Jeffersonian liberal.

When liberals get down in the gutter with trolls and try to match their simple-mindedness and especially their predilection for name-calling, we become like them...not like Thomas Jefferson.

Ever thought that, outside of planet US, Liberal is actually a term of compliment, and conservative is a term of derision?

Evidently the arse about head standards in US are not the natural reverse order universe, it exists in, and can be traced to a bunch of morons with high octane drivel espoused while high on some exotic substance, however the fact still remains; as to why the rest of the population have fallen for such a patently obvious conjecture emanating from the hind quarters of such luminaries during their respective trips?

Yet, I ask you: Isn't referring to 'trolls' in and of itself 'name-calling'? Not that I object to that - they are what they are....

Also, I must take issue with your characterization: "try to match their simple-mindedness"....A big part of what's fueling liberal outrage (to me anyway) is the willful refusal on the part of the "right" to acknowledge when their views have been exposed as the empty-headed claptrap it almost always is.

I say "almost" because liberals ARE capable of considering the merits of another point of view (supported by factual evidence) whereas Right-Wingers rarely possess such 'flexibility of thinking'. And when their flimsy reasoning is so easily shredded, rather than concede any point, it is THEY who resort to wearing the flag like a toga and calling OUR patriotism into question.

We live in a climate of THEIR making, not ours. Now that these fools have seized -not won, SEIZED power in ALL THREE BRANCHES OF GOV'T (by hook AND by crook) and have essentially brainwashed a great many otherwise sensible Americans thru fear-mongering, race-baiting bigotry and class warfare, the onus is on US to PASSIONATELY fight this idiotic ideology!!

For Blow Me: Fight it passionately, yes. Absolutely. Fight it on their terms? A thousand times, no.

My point was simply this: If we're simple-minded, if we engage in name-calling, we become like them. I use "trolls" as a pejorative, admittedly; but I use it more as a collective noun describing those for whom arguing a case on its merits is folly.

When it comes to the 2000 and 2004 elections, trolls don't offer an explanation of how 98% of the flipped votes favored Bush...a statistically impossible number. They don't confront university mathematicians with doctorates who said a 5-1/2% discrepancy between exit polls and tabulated votes was statistically impermissible.

What do they say instead? "You're a bunch of sore losers." "You're conspiracy theorists." "Get over it."

When it comes to Iraq, they're like Bush. They don't tell us what "victory" is, only that we're unpatriotic if we don't insist on it. If they're confronted with logic, they respond with mindless vitriol. If confronted with facts, they respond with hateful polemics and ad hominem attacks.

Who wants to be like them? I don't. The civil rights battle wasn't won by people who acted like George Wallace and Ku Klux Klansmen. It was won by Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. I concede that not all right-wingers are trolls...but all share with trolls a single-minded contempt for liberals. That's what defines them, more than anything else. And
while I can't prove it, I would suggest that contempt
for liberals (sissies) is rooted less in political ideology than in a perverse kind of faux masculinity that has Oedipal or homoerotic roots.

On one hand, you suggest a liberal's justifiably angry response to trollish incivility reduces us to fighting "on their terms", admonishing any trade of insults as unbecoming of us....

Yet, on the other hand, you suggest that the Troll's "contempt for liberals" is fueled by their perverted Macho Man posturing that's driven by a secret desire to screw their mothers or the frustration of closeted homosexuality rather than a genuine committment to an ideology!! LOL!!!

Not that I disagree with you....

You say: "The civil rights battle wasn't won by people who acted like George Wallace and Ku Klux Klansmen. It was won by Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks."

Hmmm. Seems to me like there were PLENTY of others who fought that battle with outright civil disobedience and LOADS of loud, outspoken and ANGRY protests and the telling of uncomfortable, ugly truths - and there's NO doubt that many 'establishment' types of that era dismissed such angry outcry as incivil and therefore without merit.